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Book Review: How To Say It: Creating Complete Customer Satisfaction by Jack Griffin

April 1, 2013 By

Creating Complete Customer SatisfactionThis book is about how to sell and keep customers satisfied.  It is a thorough book going through the sales process all the way through handling with customer complaints about your product.  It also has lists of suggested words to use and words to stay away from which can be a great help to those who are writing marketing material.

I find the book to be a great reference for anyone whether you would consider yourself in sales not.  Even person at the customer service desk in a retail store can learn a great deal from this book.
I think the most important point that anyone can take from this text is to take care of your customer.  While this seems obvious I run into many companies that forget this fundamental lesson.  If each person who reads this book can grasp this one lesson along with the concepts presented you can win in business.
There were two things that annoyed me in this book.  One was the typos at the start that gave me a bad impression of the book at first.  This does go away rather quickly so don’t let it turn you off from reading it as it seems confined to the first section or so.
The second thing were the examples.  There was not a consistent theme with the example letters and e-mails.  The “company” name changed a few time and the format of the examples changed.  While it doesn’t make anything away from what the book is trying to teach it does get a little aggravating at the back and forth between the changes.  It would be easier for people to learn the material if there were more consistency in this area.
As a whole I would recommend anyone who works one on one with customers to read and absorb this book.  You will get a lot out of it.
If you would like to get other peoples point of view or purchase the book you can do so on Amazon.
*Note: I received a copy of this book at no charge in exchange for my honest review.*
Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: , , , , ,
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Customer Service Survey

August 23, 2012 By

Customer ServiceI am doing research for a project and I want to know what customer service problems you encounter when you are out shopping or dining.  The following is a brief survey and should take less than 4 minutes to complete.

Feel free to pass this survey on to friends, family, and colleagues!


Filed Under: Customer Service Tagged With: , ,
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The Math of Customer Service

May 25, 2012 By

Dollar SignToday I had the opportunity to guest post on Chris LoCurto’s blog.  It is an issue I have been thinking about for many years.  Check it out at ChrisLoCurto.com

Filed Under: Customer Service Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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Overcomplicated

February 19, 2012 By

overcomplicatedOne of the worst things you can do for your customers is to make things overcomplicated for them.  Take a look at the picture to the right of the school sign in Michigan (My Fox Detroit).  Do you think this is good “customer service” to the tax payers?

I recently had a problem with my cell carrier.  My wife’s phone had a battery problem.  Granted, the phone was four years old but all I wanted to do was pay them for a phone and sign a new contract extending my time with them.  The problem being we were not eligible for an upgrade on that line for 14 days!  When I called customer service they told me they could upgrade me to another phone but not the one she wanted to get.  That one would have to wait.  So I call one of their stores and am told we can upgrade as long as it is in the same month – GREAT!  The upgrade as coming in on the 29th, oh, wait, because it is a leap year they moved us to March 1 meaning we were not in the current month.  Hmmmm…

So, I went to Twitter and within ten minutes got a response from someone who was customer friendly and helped us upgrade the phone, pay them for the phone, pay the upgrade fee, and sign a contract.  It took three different customer service reps and five phone calls to get approved to upgrade a phone two weeks early.  I was literally asking them to allow me to hand them money and it took this many steps to get someone who could take care of it.

This is a simple issue of over complicating an issue in an organization.  The first person I spoke with sh0uld have had the authority to make a two week decision.  Do your customer service people have the tools and power to take care of your customers?  If not, why not?  If you can’t trust them then you have the wrong people in that position.

Of course their should be limits and boundaries.  I have been involved with customer service for over a decade and some of the requests from customers can be quite outlandish.  You must put barriers up somewhere but you have to give enough freedom for your reps to make decisions and exceptions when needed.

Bottom Line:  Allow those that have direct contact with your customers be able to serve your customers.  You will be rewarded many times over with happier employees and much happier and loyal customers.

Filed Under: Careers, Customer Service, Leadership Tagged With: , , , , ,
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Lack There Of

January 22, 2012 By

We all have ran into poor customer service at one point or another.  Whether it has been a clerk that didn’t say thank you to the rep on the phone that you can tell doesn’t care what you’re complaint is.  However, what surprises me most are the businesses that are quickly losing market share but continue on the downward spiral of the most basic thing they can do to keep customers in their stores.

ApathyI was recently in a national video rental chain and had a small problem.  To put in in perspective it was all of 99 cents.  When I called the clerk’s attention to it I was simply told that the wrong sticker was on the game and they took the game from me and walked off to replace the sticker.  This was innocent enough but this was the second of three problems I had with this store from three different clerks in a five day time span.

It is common knowledge that it is easier and more cost effective to keep a current customer than to try to gain a new one.  In this case, brick and mortar rental businesses are losing rapidly to online rentals, streaming, and kiosk services.  Why go to the store and pay $1.99 for one night when I can go to iTunes and pay $2.99 and not have to get into my car?  Valid question.  The reason we do it is for selection, price, and for the family to get out of the house a little bit.  Often we need to pick up one or two grocery items which are also convenient to this particular place.

Of all three issues I had in the last few days two could have been fixed with “I’m sorry.”  This would have cost the company nothing, I would have been satisfied with that response, and we all would have moved on.  Now because of the workers at this location not being trained in proper customer care I had a decision to make.  And my decision was to not go back to any of their retail stores.  I would much prefer to pay a little more at a small businesses in the area or rent online than to deal with people who are not there to care for their customers.

The bottom line in this whole thing is “I’m Sorry” would have went a long way and kept me as a weekly customer.  It would have cost the company nothing – no free rental, no refund, no cash.  I would have felt that I had received service from the clerk.

When you have a customer who has a problem what can you do to make sure they are satisfied?

Filed Under: Customer Service Tagged With: , , , , ,
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Is it that hard to care?

August 13, 2011 By

Argue & TwistHave you ever had a problem with the service in any kind of establishment?  Sure, we all have at one time or another.

Have you ever asked to speak with the manager only to ind that though they are not arguing back you know you are going to walk out unsatisfied?

Any industry that has a customer needs to have customer service skills.  This means ALL businesses need customer service skills.  But how many times do you find the office manager who just doesn’t have the time to talk to you or in my case a dentist that can’t make himself apologize?

This past week my daughter went in to see the dentist.  She was getting a little work done which she has had previously with little issue.  She told the dentist twice that she was hurting and rather than take a moment to explain to my wife what the problem was he turned to his hygienist and told her to make an appointment where she could be sedated, tossed down the drill, and walked out.  Of course, my wife was upset by the lack of care so I called and talked to him to find out was going on.

After several minutes of explaining to him that the problem was not that he felt that he could not perform the work but that he didn’t take the time to explain what the problem was when my wife was sitting in the same room he continued to say “I assumed she knew what the problem was.” and “If she had a question she should have spoken up.”

Really?

The average person can see where the flaw in basic customer service is here.  All I wanted was to find out the problem and a simple apology for acting the way he did.  I really got neither since he didn’t care.  He didn’t even bother to argue his point.  It was simply our fault for not asking.

Your customers should not have to ask.  You should be out seeking their problems and finding solutions to them.  This is what keeps your customers happy and keeps them coming back to you.

If you are at a grocery store and there are no carts available at the door you have the option to go out and get one yourself.  It is your problem since you are the one wanting to shop.  How would you feel if his was the response you got at that store?

At Walt Disney World guests were forgetting where their cars were in the parking lot all the time.  The tram operators took it upon themselves to start writing down where they were in the parking lot at a certain time and this list of times is handed to cast members at the end of the day.  If you can not find your car but know what time you parked they can help you get in the general area of where you were picked up.  Where your car is parked is not their problem but they saw an opportunity to help their guests and did so.  By doing this you have less frustrated people who see their visit to your location as pleasant.  Was this a hard thing to do?  Absolutely not.

Now you have a decision to make.  Are you going to be like the dentist who will no longer be getting our business (he lost two patients with one unapologetic attitude) or are you going to be the tram operator who took the initiative?

Photo courtesy of Fimb.

Filed Under: Customer Service, Life Coaching Tagged With: , , , ,